Millennial parents are raising their kids without a focus on religion. According to Parents, Millennial parents tend to have fewer children, and they subscribe less to traditional expectations about family structure than parents of previous generations do.
The American Enterprise Institute in November of 2019, conducted Interviews about religion with a sample size of 2,561 adults living in the United States. Here are some key findings:
Young adults (age 18 to 29) are far more likely to have been raised without religion than are seniors (age 65 and older). Roughly one in five (22 percent) young adults report that they were not raised in any particular religion, compared to only 3 percent of seniors. The proportion of young adults who have always been religiously unaffiliated is nearly as large as those who have left religion to become unaffiliated.
Younger married Americans (age 18 to 34) are increasingly opting for secular venues and ceremonies. Only 36 percent of younger married Americans say their ceremony was officiated by a religious figure and held in a religious location (church or worship center). Sixteen percent say they were married by a religious leader in a nonreligious setting, while nearly half (48 percent) report being married by a different type of officiant in a secular venue.
Fewer than half (48 percent) of young adults agree that raising children in a religious community is important to a moral foundation. A majority (53 percent) of young adults say this is not the case.
Bustle reported in 2015 that a 2010 Duke University study found that kids raised in a secular upbringing display less susceptibility to racism and peer pressure, and are “less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian and more tolerant, on average than religious adults.”
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